Occhiello: Indispensabile

ANDREA SALUSTRI ROME’S LOCAL PUBLIC TRANSPORT SYSTEM: HOW TO TRIGGER A RESILIENT TRANSFORMATION TOWARD SUSTAINABILITY? Introduction. – Local Public Transport service (LPT) and the terms of its provision are topics of the utmost importance for Rome, as well as for many other cities in the world, in order to achieve effective and sus- tainable urban mobility and improve health and the overall quality of life of citizens. It was shown in a recent Conference1 how many Romans might look favourably at a competition-based model of LPT supply due to negative impacts of ATAC on the local administration’s budget2. However, there are also supporters of the status quo who emphasize the risk that liberalization might de facto turn into a privatization process and therefore into a sale of the know-how that the publicly owned firm has accumulated in several decades of its operation. Figure 1 highlights the relevance of Rome’s LPT system in Italy, as it serves, on average, a 75-85% share of all users observed in the other larger Italian cities, i.e. a 35-40% share of the users monitored at the national level. Furthermore, the data illustrate that the number of urban LPT users in Italy slightly decreased from 2011 to 2016 (from 3.807 billion users in 2011 to 3.406 billion users in 2015), and the negative change was more consistent in Rome than in the other Italian larger cities (overall, almost -20%). This evidence has often been associated with the ef- fects of the global financial crisis on the demand for local transport services, but it also might depend on issues concerning the supply side (i.e., decrease in service quality, reduced reliability of travels…) and the de- 1 The Conference Liberalization and innovation in the public transport, held the 24th of May 2018 by the Roman Radical Party at the Italian Deputy’s Chamber. 2 ATAC is the acronym for “Azienda per i Trasporti Autoferrotranviari del Comune. ATAC Nuova Agenzia per la mobilità is the publicly-owned local firm operating in the LPT sector in Rome under a monopolistic regime. 95 A. SALUSTRI [DOI: 10.19246/DOCUGEO2281-7549/201901_05] creasing quality of the territorial context (enduring urban sprawl, ampli- fied polarization, cumulative socio-economic divides…). Indeed, the second interpretation seems more appropriate, as the sovereign debt crisis contributed to exacerbate the lack of available funds for public spend- ing both in the local and national administrations. However, more in- depth analysis is needed to validate or reject this hypothesis. Fig. 1 - Annual level of LPT urban users in Italy (million per year) Source: our elaboration on ISTAT data. “Italian larger cities” include: Turin, Genoa, Milan, Venice, Bologna, Florence, Naples, Bari, Palermo, Catania. “Rest of Provinces” include all other provincial capitals Going back to the analysis of Rome’s LPT system, it is worth noting how ATAC, during the last ten years of its operation, has revealed weak- nesses that might be imputed to a wide array of exogenous and endoge- nous causes. First, a major issue to address is the hyper congestion that characterizes Rome territory (Vv. Aa. 2013, p.213-20; Perretti, 2014, p.117; Vv. Aa., 2018) that at the same time thwarts input productivity and service quality. Second, fare evasion has consistently depressed the amount of revenues collected (Lupidi, 2010; AGCM, 2016; Bitetti, Gen- ovese, 2016; ASPL, 2018, pp.21), raising the need for public subsidies far beyond real financial needs. Third, the average age of ATAC’s fleet is in- creasing and the vehicles often show signs of malfunctioning as labour 96 ROME’S LOCAL PUBLIC TRANSPORT SYSTEM costs and other current expenditures absorb almost the whole budget al- located for operations (Perretti, 2013, p. 120; ASPL, 2018, pp. 11-15). Fourth, the absenteeism is high compared to the one observed in other Italian firms operating in the LPT sector, and that exacerbates the al- ready low labour productivity (Marabucci, Spirito, 2016; ASPL, 2018, p. 14). Fifth, ATAC’s governance has shown to be dysfunctional under several profiles, as many stakeholders might have postponed common interests in favour of their personal ones3 (Danovi, Kerletsos, 2010; Per- retti, 2013, p.119; Vv. Aa., 2013; Bitetti, Genovese, 2016). Finally, the mobility sector is facing a technological revolution that is affecting Rome’s LPT system as well, and in the future it will be difficult to match technological innovation and protection of labour rights. Lying on these premises, while fostering the “resilient transformation” (Giovannini, 2018) of Rome’s LPT toward sustainability, the research focuses on the analysis of the major issues debated in the international and national literature on local public transportation, and the in- fluence of the territorial context on both the demand and the supply of mobility services. Moreover, the research briefly summarizes the mile- stones that characterize the historical trend of Rome’s LPT system, and assesses its current status, to identify all major sources of inefficiency and ineffectiveness, and the available “institutional space” for the implementation of new policies. Finally, the research discusses a collection of styl- ized facts that could shed light on the relevance of internal and external factors in determining ATAC’s inefficiency and suboptimal performances. A brief literature overview: the elaboration of a multi-level framework of analysis. – In this paragraph the main theoretical issues collected at international, national and local level are briefly summarized, with the aim of identify- ing three pieces of a common framework of analysis involving macroe- 3 During the Conference on May 24th 2018, it was argued that the Municipality of Rome had often confused the role of stockholder with the one of managing authority, and that several ATAC managers based their decisions on local political influences. Furthermore, it was claimed that labour unions had often represented workers’ individ- ual rather than collective interests, and several suppliers had signed agreements with ATAC under extremely favourable conditions due to private connections (see also Vv. Aa. 2011, p. 955; Peretti, 2013, p. 122). 97 A. SALUSTRI [DOI: 10.19246/DOCUGEO2281-7549/201901_05] conomic trends, public policies and local needs. The three approaches are integrated to provide an interdisciplinary perspective of analysis on Rome’s LPT system. i) Integrating transportation economics and spatial planning. – The International Conference Series on Competition and Ownership in Land Passenger Transport (known as Thredbo series) is a pillar of the international literature on transportation economics. The first conference was held in 1989, and since then 14 biennial conferences brought a heterogeneous public of experts to discuss matters of mutual interest (Bray, Hensher, Wong, 2018). It is worth noting how the first Thredbo conference was held few years after the United Kingdom’s bus and coach industry reforms initiat- ed in 1985 with the Transport Act4. Economists followed with interest these reforms, also because other countries soon involved in similar pro- grams, and most of them continued to this day (Wong, Hensher, 2018). It is also important to mention how, over the Thredbo series, almost a half of the experience was explicitly related to urban transport and a fur- ther 13% to non-urban, (Bray, Hensher, Wong, 2018, p. 28). A detailed analysis of the main topics discussed in the Thredbo Conferences goes beyond the scope of this paper, however several general and sectorial re- views are available online5. The review of past papers of the first thirty years of the Thredbo series on developments in public transport institutional reform, contract design and implementation follows a thematic and a historical approach (Wong, Hensher, 2018). Specifically, the analysis focuses on market arbi- tration, procurement mechanisms, asset ownership, contract design, risk allocation and contract management, and for each topic three eras of thinking reflect are illustrated (the early ages, 1989-1996, covering the first four conferences in Thredbo; the turn of the century, 1996-2006, including the next five conferences; the recent developments, 2006-2017, almost corre- sponding to the post-Global financial crisis) (ibidem). While the analysis is exhaustive from a historical perspective, it seems to lack a geographical dimension, i.e. a discussion on how social and territorial contexts might affect decisions concerning the local transport 4 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1985/67 (verified the 30th of June 2019). 5 https://thredbo-conference-series.org/(verified the 30th of June 2019). 98 ROME’S LOCAL PUBLIC TRANSPORT SYSTEM policies. Therefore, to complement the contents of the review of the Thredbo series, the literature overview focuses on the interdependence among geographical and socioeconomic factors, and the organization and the performances of local transport systems, with a specific attention posed to the analysis of the Italian context and of Rome’s LPT. At a general level of analysis, Williams et al. (2017) illustrates how land use zoning and urban sprawl imply an increased travel demand because people cannot work near their homes and cannot make use of local services and facilities. Instead, contained, compact, urban layouts, with a mix of uses in proximity, can provide population densities high enough to support public transport services and, to improved urban design, encourage cy- cling and walking. Variations on this

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